Let’s Stop Idealizing the Home-Cooked Family Dinner

[musiclady]

I just don't get why this article keeps pushing that fresh produce is SO expensive!  It gets expensive if you don't plan to use fresh food before it spoils, but a bag of onions or potatoes, lettuce, carrots, peppers and whatever is in season will do me a week in varieties of dishes.  It takes a little planning, but it doesn't take long to get it going. 

My mother was a stay at home mother and she cooked almost every meal we ate - and the foods she cooked for us are the foods I cook when I want to feel a sense of being in my cozy home and feeling the love of my mother.  To me, food is love and it is central to any family gathering.  It is sustenance and love.

If a person is stressed out by cooking, like Oceander said - those rotisserie chickens are great.  Get one of those, a bag of pre-washed salad mix and a bag of frozen vegetable mix.  For $12, you have a dinner for 2 adults and 2 or 3 children - that you can throw on the table in ten minutes! 

But for me, I love to cook.  One of the nicest days I can ever have is to be home cooking a big pot of soup or a roast, with rain spattering on my windows and wind whipping at the leaves outside.  HEAVEN!

It's hard to do it every day, but there should be an effort to do it because it means a lot, especially to children.  It's important, in my opinion.

I can't say that I "love" to cook, but I love making the kids favorite meals when they come home for a visit.  They all live a long, long way from home (and at many times have lived overseas), and they love having their favorite homemade soup the day they get home.

I have also sent cookies all over the world, and actually had a reputation for my cookies in Iraq and Afghanistan.  (If anyone ever needs to know how to pack them right so they don't break while being shipped into a war zone, just ask.  ^-^ )

[alicewonders]

I can't say that I "love" to cook, but I love making the kids favorite meals when they come home for a visit.  They all live a long, long way from home (and at many times have lived overseas), and they love having their favorite homemade soup the day they get home.

I have also sent cookies all over the world, and actually had a reputation for my cookies in Iraq and Afghanistan.  (If anyone ever needs to know how to pack them right so they don't break while being shipped into a war zone, just ask.  ^-^ )

More than the taste of the food, it's psychological, and the whole concept of "comfort food" is amazing - the emotions and the smells that take you back fifty years to a time and place when you were still a relative innocent and your life was somewhat sheltered.  It's an enormous source of comfort for me sometimes.

 

[DCPatriot]

More than the taste of the food, it's psychological, and the whole concept of "comfort food" is amazing - the emotions and the smells that take you back fifty years to a time and place when you were still a relative innocent and your life was somewhat sheltered.  It's an enormous source of comfort for me sometimes.

 

Funny, but like retrieving an old file on the computer...I can instantly put myself back as a little boy, waking up on Sunday mornings, I swear to God....actually smelling my grandmother's meatballs frying on the stove downstairs...the sauce bubbling on the stove.  The pasta drying on the wooden poles supported by the Chippendale style dining room chairs.  It meant uncles/aunts and cousins were coming for dinner.

It was a memorable day when I graduated from the card table filled with small children to the big table where the adults gathered.  LOL!

[GourmetDan]

I just don't get why this article keeps pushing that fresh produce is SO expensive!  It gets expensive if you don't plan to use fresh food before it spoils, but a bag of onions or potatoes, lettuce, carrots, peppers and whatever is in season will do me a week in varieties of dishes.  It takes a little planning, but it doesn't take long to get it going. 

It's just so *hard* for these poor, single mothers.  You can't expect them to manage affordable fresh produce too.

You just don't care about people.

I'll be you're one of those mean, old conservatives I've heard about...

[alicewonders]

Funny, but like retrieving an old file on the computer...I can instantly put myself back as a little boy, waking up on Sunday mornings, I swear to God....actually smelling my grandmother's meatballs frying on the stove downstairs...the sauce bubbling on the stove.  The pasta drying on the wooden poles supported by the Chippendale style dining room chairs.  It meant uncles/aunts and cousins were coming for dinner.

It was a memorable day when I graduated from the card table filled with small children to the big table where the adults gathered.  LOL!

I too, eventually got to graduate to the adult table!  Your memory took me back to staying with my grandparents "up home" as my parents called it, in the summer.  Pappaw was a farmer and got up before daylight, I would lay in that warm bed piled high with handmade quilts and listen to him and my grandmother talk while she fixed breakfast.  I can still smell the slab bacon and eggs straight out of the coop, and my Mammaw's biscuits which I've never been able to duplicate - of course, it being eastern Kentucky - there was gravy to go on those biscuits.

Pappaw would have the radio on - farm and weather reports with bluegrass music in between.  Once Mammaw would coax us out of our cocoon-like beds and into the kitchen, we could usually talk Pappaw into doing a little jig to the music (he was pretty good) before we would devour that wonderful breakfast. 

Really wonderful memories. 

[musiclady]

More than the taste of the food, it's psychological, and the whole concept of "comfort food" is amazing - the emotions and the smells that take you back fifty years to a time and place when you were still a relative innocent and your life was somewhat sheltered.  It's an enormous source of comfort for me sometimes.

 

After I had surgery a few years ago, I craved a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup, and ordered it for lunch.  The nurse who came in afterwards said it's one of the most commonly ordered menu items in the hospital because it reminds patients of their childhoods (in my case, it went back a full 50 years!).

I'm sure that comfort is one of the reasons all four of our kids want to come home to the smell (and taste) of soup.  It's the only real "aroma therapy!"  ^-^

[musiclady]

Funny, but like retrieving an old file on the computer...I can instantly put myself back as a little boy, waking up on Sunday mornings, I swear to God....actually smelling my grandmother's meatballs frying on the stove downstairs...the sauce bubbling on the stove.  The pasta drying on the wooden poles supported by the Chippendale style dining room chairs.  It meant uncles/aunts and cousins were coming for dinner.

It was a memorable day when I graduated from the card table filled with small children to the big table where the adults gathered.  LOL!

There are frequent jokes in our family about the kid's table, and getting to move to the adult table.

Sometimes our youngest daughter and her cousin (same age) kid about wanting to set up the card table and sit at it during Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas Eve.

Must have been a tradition in a lot of families!

[Oceander]

Just because it's difficult doesn't mean it's still not the ideal.  Eating together as a family helps seal the family unit, and should be the goal, if not always workable.  (Raised four kids in more than four sports with music lessons, groups, church activities, etc...... it's NOT always workable).

And glad they stuck in the "or gosh, men" line at the end, because the entire article puts all the pressure on women to do all the cooking to reach the end goal.

Doesn't necessarily have to work that way.

Unless all men are stupid.   

Most of the at-home cooking in my household is done by me.  I enjoy it, am better at it than my beloved wife, and use a lot fewer dishes during the process so there's a lot less clean-up at the end.


That being said, most men are stupid anyways - I thought you'd figured that out! 

[alicewonders]

Most of the at-home cooking in my household is done by me.  I enjoy it, am better at it than my beloved wife, and use a lot fewer dishes during the process so there's a lot less clean-up at the end.


That being said, most men are stupid anyways - I thought you'd figured that out!

Stupid men, and the stupid women that love them.   

[aligncare]

I am a better cook than my wife ever was. She used recipes and did okay with that. But she never innovated or fussed with the food while it simmered. I feel you have to attend to food while it cooks; watch and taste, make sure all is going well.

I generally don't use recipes -- I learned basic techniques of cooking from Joy and Julia and dozens of other cooking shows and books, and can whip up a dish from ingredients on hand.

My specialties are Chinese and Italian.

[musiclady]

Most of the at-home cooking in my household is done by me.  I enjoy it, am better at it than my beloved wife, and use a lot fewer dishes during the process so there's a lot less clean-up at the end.


That being said, most men are stupid anyways - I thought you'd figured that out! 

I kinda have figured that out!

I always said that all it takes to be able to cook well is to be able to read, and to have taste buds.

I believe those qualities are gender neutral.   ^-^

[musiclady]

I am a better cook than my wife ever was. She used recipes and did okay with that. But she never innovated or fussed with the food while it simmered. I feel you have to attend to food while it cooks; watch and taste, make sure all is going well.

I generally don't use recipes -- I learned basic techniques of cooking from Joy and Julia and dozens of other cooking shows and books, and can whip up a dish from ingredients on hand.

My specialties are Chinese and Italian.

So when are we all invited over for dinner?